'I'm the girl with the ladydad'
What happens when your dad becomes a woman? Mainly, Natasha Ozimek tells Maureen Paton, you end up disapproving of his makeup and clothes
Maureen Paton
The Guardian, Friday 17 February 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/18/gender-dysmorphia-daughter-dad-womanNatasha Ozimek was 16, and two days away from sitting her physics AS-level, when her father John told her he was planning to change sex; a process known as transitioning. "It was awful when I found out. My throat was doing a wobbly and then I just burst into tears. Dad was trying to hug me and I was having none of it. I think I blanked out in shock a little bit, and spent that night in the conservatory in my pyjamas until four in the morning, just crying," recalls Natasha, now 18. "It's the last thing you expect your dad to do – the one male figure in your life."
Gradually, people in their small town of Deeping St James, Lincolnshire, got to hear the news. "I didn't talk to any of my friends at school for about three weeks," says Tash, as she is known. "Then my best friend, Nina, came up to me and said she knew. Dad had contacted her mum to say, 'I think Tash is having a bit of a hard time because of this ...' And then Nina and I told other people together. It was a bit like us against the world; we weren't going to be ashamed or frightened.
